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Pope Francis leads the synod of bishops in Paul VI's hall at the Vatican October 6, 2014. Pope Francis opened a global Roman Catholic assembly on Sunday showing his apparent irritation with Church leaders who have waged a sometimes bitter public battle between progressives and conservatives on family issues. A recently released midterm report from the Synod of Bishops on the family, which defended the traditional definition of marriage but used positive language towards same-sex couples in some situations, has garnered controversy among some bishops who say it does not accurately reflect the assembly's views. "In regard to homosexuality, there...

ROME (CNN) - Under furious assault from conservative Catholics, the Vatican backtracked Tuesday on its surprisingly positive assessment of gays and same-sex relationships. In a report Monday, the Vatican had said that gays and lesbians have "gifts to offer" the Christian community and acknowledged that same-sex couples can give "precious support" to one other. The statement, an interim report from a closely watched meeting of Catholic clergy here, was widely praised by liberals. It is believed be the first time the Vatican has said anything positive about gay relationships. One longtime Vatican journalist called the statement a "pastoral earthquake." But...

Some time ago, as part of the media buzz surrounding the purchase of the Crystal Cathedral, the Catholic Diocese of Orange opened the floor to online suggestions as to what the new church should be named. I offered that it should be titled the Cathedral of the Transfiguration; after all, the feast of the Transfiguration is traditionally the patronal festival for churches dedicated to Our Lord, and its suggestions of illumination, splendor, and above all, a glimpse of Heaven afforded through physical change, seemed perfectly suited to the project, even not without a bit of reverent wit. The name chosen,...

Catholic bishops meeting to discuss 'family issues' at a two week summit have said unmarried couples living together can be 'positive', and gay relationships and divorces must be welcomed. Displaying remarkably liberal attitudes for a Church famed for its conservatism, bishops meeting in the Vatican today also said that a couples' decision on the use of contraception should be respected.

The secular-progressive media is hell-bent on trying to shape an image of Pope Francis as a fellow liberal-progressive, just like them. Give him more time, the media suggests, and he’ll soon be allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion, allowing gays to marry within the Church, ordaining gays, ordaining women, endorsing the HHS mandate, praising Planned Parenthood, and who knows what else.It’s an incessant, incestuous, exasperating image that liberals in the media are pushing with abandon. Almost every one of Francis’ actions or statements is contorted to try to remake the man, and thus his Church, in their (the...

HAMPTONS BAY, Long Island (PIX11)– A Long Island priest is accused of molesting a 6-year-old girl, resulting in her contracting an STD. Rev. Augusto Cortez, 50, a Catholic priest of the Vincentian congregation, is wanted by police for sexually assaulting a little girl from Long Island, according to police. Her family, who will not be named in order to avoid identifying the alleged victim, is deeply distraught, particularly because their child’s suspected molester is someone they trusted and turned to for religious guidance. “It’s the deepest pain that any mother can ever feel,” the victim’s mother said. Cortez spent numerous...

A few weeks ago New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee (SPDC) made a cynical and politically correct decision to allow Gays to march in the parade under a banner proclaiming they are proud sodomites. No one else in the parade is allow to advertise their particular sin; there have been no demands from groups to march under a banner saying “Proud Irish burglars.” But none of this means much to the SPDC. Those of us who have loved this parade and have fond memories of watching it and marching in it held our collective breath and waited for...

Islam has been at war with the Catholic Church for fourteen hundred years. It may be politically correct to describe Islam’s war as one against “Christianity,” but true Islamists have hated the Roman Church well before the advent of other Christian churches. Now and always these mongrels have known the true identity of their ancient enemy. During the papacy of Pope John Paul II, Islamists tried to murder him in Rome. The attempt on John Paul was carried out by a Turkish sniper named Mehmet Ali Agca who shot him four times. By the hand of God the Pope did...

The Trouble With Calvin – Pt. 2 In my last post, I began a series of critiques of John Calvin’s famous “five points,” most often referred to using the acronym, TULIP, which represents Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistibility of Grace, and The Perseverance of the Saints (“once saved, always saved”). In this installment, we’ll deal with Unconditional Election.Calvin’s idea of Unconditional Election simply means that God “elected” certain men for salvation and others for damnation from all eternity, rooted in texts of Scripture, as we will see below, like Romans 9:10-12:And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived...

The Eucharist conforms Catholics to “the pattern of Christ’s self-giving love” and compels them to see the dignity of the poor and perform acts of mercy, Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori said at the June 21 opening Mass for this year’s Fortnight for Freedom. The Mass coincided with the feast of Corpus Christi. “By entering the dynamic of Christ’s self-giving eucharistic love, we are impelled ... to work for a loving and just society where the dignity of human life is respected from conception until natural death and all the stages in between,” he said in his homily. More than...

To the loathsome, liberal Democrat it is never important what he/she says; it is only THAT he/she says. They are the experts at dog whistle messages to their anti-American donors and the theme is always the same: “You hate America and/or the Catholic Church. I hate them as well so send me money so I can keep on attacking them.” Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is one of the best at crafting messages to the hating crowd that makes up the Democrat Party. She knows how to tap into their wallets. She has carved out a special niche for herself as the...

In 2014, how can grown men write this with a straight face? International Theological Commission of the Catholic Church The Church had one Pentecost. One. The Church does not need new foundations, she is not a country in search of new constitutional orders. Enough is enough: 50 years of collapse of the sensus catholicus, collapse of Catholic life in all countries where the Church was firmly established in Europe and the Americas, near-disappearance of all Catholic communities across the Middle East (in this case, mostly through no fault of the hierarchy, but still indicating that speaking of a "new Pentecost"...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi took the lead this week in a high-profile lobbying effort to pressure San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone not to attend the controversial March for Marriage event, which she characterized as "venom masquerading as virtue." Pelosi, who is one of the country's most powerful Catholic politicians, made a passionate appeal to the archbishop in a letter obtained by The Chronicle not to participate in the National Organization for Marriage's June 19 march on the Supreme Court in Washington. Cordileone, who is one of the featured speakers at the event, was a leader in the campaign for...

An adviser to Pope Francis says Catholicism is incompatible with libertarianism. He's right. At least by one National Review writer's definition of the free market. It should come as no surprise that Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga's recent comments on American libertarianism have stirred a bit of a furor in free-market circles. On American zeal for preserving laissez-faire economic systems, the Honduran Cardinal had the following to say at speech on June 3 in Washington, D.C.: The elimination of the structural causes for poverty is a matter of urgency that can no longer be postponed... The hungry or sick child of...

What has Darwinism got in common with Modernism? Everything! They are two edges of the same blade. A century ago, how could any Catholic dare question the Church’s dogmatic teaching and not be excommunicated as a heretic? The answer is that natural science has allegedly shown that nothing in the realm of the created world is immutable. It has proved thereby that the Church was wrong in dogmatically declaring that fully operating living beings with stable natures were produced from nothing. The knowledge now amassed from biology, physics, and chemistry is already sufficient to render the notion of creation ex...

An essay in which I argue that scientists make for poor moralists and that the only institution in the world able to call these scientists to account is the Roman Catholic Church, because only within her the fusion of faith and reason has come to full fruition.. Brethren, Peace be with you! I hope and pray you’ve been set afire by the Holy Spirit as we made his bestowing present once again the liturgy last Sunday.Today, I wish to knit a “tapestry” of considerations about the relationship between empirical science and morality. Each consideration stands by itself but it is...

ROME — Pope Francis says he believes that Roman Catholic priests should be celibate but the rule was not an unchangeable dogma and “the door is always open” to change. Francis made similar comments when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires but his remarks to reporters on a plane returning from a Middle East trip were the first he has made since becoming pope. “Celibacy is not a dogma,” he said Monday in answer to a question about whether the Catholic Church could some day allow priests to marry as they can in some other Christian Churches. “It is a...

In 2017, we will witness the 500th anniversary of one of the most important, influential and regrettable events in Church history: the Protestant Reformation, or the Protestant Rebellion, as some prefer to call it. Indeed, the latter term would suit me better, too. But, being German, I am used to the former expression and should I ever refer to said event as die protestantische Rebellion, people would think me some sort of radical. On that thought, perhaps it is worth noting that rebels are often quite radical themselves, which is one thing we can definitely say of the so-called "Reformers"....

Thomas Woods' book titled HOW THE CATHOLIC CHURCH BUILD WESTERN CIVILIZATION is an unanswerable antidote to anti-Catholic bashers and their mindless sychophants. Prof. Woods provides a compelling case that Western Civilization could not have thrived without the valuable achievements of the Catholic Church over the past 2,000 years. Prof. Woods survey of the Catholic Church in late Ancient History and during the Dark Ages makes clear that the Catholic Church authorities and especially the monks were invaluable in preserving learning. He makes clear that the early Catholic monks and nuns were the only literate people in Europe, and they preserved...

Recently Norte Dame University, a putatively “Catholic” school, denied certification as a sanctioned on campus club to a group of students who wanted to come together to defend marriage. Father John Jenkins’ administration ran the students in a circle with technical objections of the type that it would never hold against a Pro-gay marriage club or any Gay Lesbian or transgendered club. Because it has long since abandoned any pretense of caring about Catholic doctrine, Notre Dame like dozens of other non-Catholic Catholic schools, has a Gay Lesbian and Transgender club. Panting after acceptance by the secular world, Notre Dame’s...